I got up early this morning, and snuck out to do a couple of loads of laundry and catch up on the blog while the rest of the family slept in. I hadn’t washed clothes since Savannah, and our dwindling stash of shorts and underwear was not going to last until we get home.
Home. Now that we’ve wrapped up our time in Orlando, we’re starting to orient ourselves -- physically and emotionally -- back toward Indiana. Our itinerary had us driving to Gulf Shores, Ala., today, so that we could explore the beaches around Mobile tomorrow and start to head home on Tuesday. Although I hated to renounce my carefully considered route, this morning Keith and I considered skipping that last leg of our trip and just making a beeline for Lafayette. We wavered back and forth on this as we drove all day through Florida, and didn’t really commit to a plan until we got close to Pensacola, where the road forks.
On one hand, we didn’t have any pressing plans in Gulf Shores; there’s nothing there that we needed to see. But on the other hand, we wanted to cross Alabama off of our list of states in our quest to get to all 50. We finally decided to scrap the visit to Gulf Shores, and to instead head north and spend the night in Montomery, Ala. From here, Lafayette, Ind., is just 630 miles straight up I-65, and if we push hard we could be home tomorrow.
We could ... except now that we’ve settled in here in an Embassy Suites in downtown Montgomery, we’re realizing that it would be a mistake to rush through this city without stopping at the Civil Rights Memorial Museum and the Rosa Parks and Museum and Library.
The kids had thoroughly embraced the idea of sleeping in their own beds tomorrow night. So when we broke the news that we have shifted plans again, and have decided to spend half a day exploring Montgomery, they responded with cold, stony stares. They’ll thank us one day, right?
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